Alberta Ferretti

It's increasingly difficult, and ultimately pointless, to try to parse an Alberta Ferretti runway show as if it were a "collection" with a theme. Instead, it is what it is: an assortment of this and that, with sporadic touches of trend and a bit of something for everyone. For Fall, that meant a 15-minute parade that included magenta, aqua, and ocher color-blocking in chiffon and tailoring; eighties black leather; a glitter-shoulder rock-chick body-con dress; Art Deco flapperwear; sober gray wool pieces; and metallic brocade Edwardiana party frocks.

That said, the content never veered too far off the known Ferretti path. She showed her staples: feminine coats, pretty chiffon (now cut into billowy blouses—a less expensive addition to her signature line of dresses), and bugle-beaded eveningwear (the best piece was a silvery twenties number on Jourdan Dunn). In Ferretti's stores, with the collection merchandised into logical groupings and with her inarguable knowledge of what women need from clothes for a broad spectrum of events and eventualities, her "stories" will undoubtedly all hang together in a perfectly orchestrated whole. Stringing them along back-to-back in a linear fashion, however, doesn't make a narrative.